The present invention relates to fire extinguishing devices for chimneys and more specifically relates to a chimney stack attachment for fire extinguishers. The present invention permits the user of a coal or wood burning stove to extinguish a chimney fire in a simple and quick manner.
Chimney fires have recently been a major source of house fires due to the recent popularity of coal and wood burning stoves. The increased use of wood stoves and fireplaces purchased to combat oil and gas costs has also increased the buildup of flammable products in the chimney, therefore increasing the occurance of chimney fires. Home owners who have converted to wood burning stoves to heat their homes must regularly clean the chimney to avoid the buildup of creosote or soot which has proven to be an expensive and frequently needed procedure. A common method for extinguishing chimney fires from a wood burning stove has been to quickly race to the cellar and throw fire extinguishing powder into the ashpit door. The powder is inhaled up the chimney thereby dousing the fire. This method is obviously unreliable and unsafe.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a chimney fire extinguisher to reduce the possibility of damage by and from such fires. In this regard, a number of solutions have been proposed in the art.
One solution has been to provide an apparatus which atomizes liquid as exemplified in Le Gous U.S. Pat. No. 1,889,483. In the event of a chimney fire, the atomizer is placed at the mouth of the fireplace and the liquid is injected up the draught to extinguish the fire. Since wood stoves are attached to chimneys by a chimney stack which leads to the stove belly, liquid injected into a stove belly would probably fail to reach the chimney.
Another solution, shown by Soucy, U.S. Pat. No. 2,297,808 has been to provide a sprinkler system for chimneys. The Soucy assembly incorporates an electrical system which involves a temperature responsive element in the chimney draught which is affected by a high temperature thereby activating a sprinkler system to douse the fire. In this instance, the system is not controlled manually, thus the sprinkler may be activated unintentionally.
Lagasse U.S. Pat. No. 4,341,267 shows a chimney fire extinguisher adapted to be mounted on the top, outside portion of a chimney. The system includes a fluid container suspended outside the chimney having a discharge pipe hanging down inside the chimney. A flow control means is temperature activated thereby releasing the liquid at a certain temperature to douse a chimney fire. Such liquid fire extinguishers tend to be messy after the fire is doused, and may cause chimney cracking.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,570 of Mar. 25, 1980 to Arencibia, Jr. a fire down in a well is extinguished by directing a flow of high momentum, inert gas down a vent against the apex of a conical diffuser and against the flow path of the combustible gas to block the flow, the inert gas preferably being helium.
C. W. Terry, U.S. Pat. No. 3,403,733 discloses an electronic cabinet with fire extinguishing apparatus. This is a built-in system adapted to discharge a fire extinguishing fluid into a closed cabinet without damaging the outside circuitry. The Terry apparatus as a closed system does not appear to be applicable to fireplaces or stoves as is the present invention.
These prior art systems are complicated to use and assemble and are expensive to manufacture. It would appear that there is still a need in the art for a simple and effective device for extinguishing chimney fires.
It is accordingly the object of the present invention to enable the user of a wood burning stove to readily extinguish a chimney fire in a safe, easy and convenient manner. This object is achieved with little apparatus maintenance and with no damage to the chimney.